Sunday, April 19, 2015

Dux Bellorum with Dux Homunculorum

I can't believe it's taken me this long, but I FINALLY got to play a game of Dux Bellorum on Friday night. I'll write up my thoughts on the game properly, but for the moment suffice it to say that the game gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

With the game coming up I had good reason to make a major push on finishing some more units for my Romano-British army. I've been trying as much as possible to make densely packed units with 14 figures in two rows on a 120mm frontage base. However, I also have a bunch of figures individually based on 20mm round bases for Dux Britanniarum and other skirmish games. A while back the good people at Warbases made me some custom movement trays, allowing me to get 10 individually based figures into a 120mm unit, with the slots for the figures being as irregularly spaced as possible. The problem is that on 20mm bases the figures are pretty top heavy, and kept falling out. So last night I set about mounting a rare earth magnet in each of the slots on the movement trays.

Don't forget the dust mask when drilling MDF. And note the awesome pink power drill I won in a raffle raising money for breast cancer

Each of the individual figures has magnetic strip stuck on the base, so this does help the figures resist some amount of wobbling, although certainly doesn't solve the problem entirely. With all the figures based, I now have a pretty reasonably sized force; more than enough for Dux Bellorum, especially when adding in the cavalry and skirmishers that aren't pictured here, and looking pretty good for Impetus and Sword and Spear as well.

One of the nice things about making a sub-Roman army is how well the figures from different ranges match, allowing units with loads of variety. Mine include Westwind, Black Tree Design, Artizan, Gripping Beast metal and plastic and Crusader miniatures.

The whole army is fantastic. Around 20 years ago at MOAB in Sydney I spotted an Arthurian army in 28mm that was selling for the princely sum of $400.00. I think I had about $20.00 to spend at the time. that one army always gave me the desire to do 28mm armies of my own so far.......sold 3 own........1/2 of one ouch.

Interesting mounting system. I did the same way to mount mine miniatures back in October of last year. But I also used the 20mm squares stands also. As most of my Romans where based for Warhammer Historical and Hail Caesar. Here is the linkhttp://gary-oldsargeswargameandmodelblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/basing-my-middle-republican-romans.html